Finnish Him!

Today we’re talking about Finland.

Finland is so hot right now! Number one in education, chock-full of beautiful, athletic people, close to the top of the Happiness Index, boatloads of reindeer, world-class infrastructure, dominant in all those economic/health/quality of life categories; the Finns are absolutely crushin’ it.

How do they do it? What are their secrets? 

Finland is just crushin’ it these days! Flag via CIA Factbook, so don’t do anything weird with it.

This of course should be at the top of every U.S. politician’s agenda (figuring out how to co-opt things and ideas from other countries in a way that is beneficial to us) but it’s not easy to admit when you’ve been outhustled, outmaneuvered and outcoached. The truth is, we’re being out-America’d.

It’s time to put the pride aside America. Time to head to Helsinki, flat-billed MLB hats in hand, and say, “Alright, how’d you do it?” Better we do this now as opposed to a Kent Brockman-esque welcoming of our new Finnish overlords in 2085. “Hail, Finns!”

Now of course it is ridiculous to compare Finland to the U.S.A. – they’re about the size of New Mexico, and we’ve got 310 million more folks to deal with – but there is much to be gained by studying, and hopefully stealing from, their ways.

Clearly our fatcat politicians lack the initiative or vision to enact any sort of useful Finnish Extraction and Implementation strategies, so let’s break this down ourselves and make some action points to get the ball rolling.

1. The first thing that strikes me about Finland is how clean and majestic everything looks. Look at any pictures of Finland online. That whole dadgum country looks like a screensaver. I suppose it’s possible they just shove all their trash under the snow (unleashing a horrific river of garbage in the summertime), but the country just seems incredibly tidy.

1a. Action Point: Stop throwing beer cans out the window, and build more majestic things like mountains, lakes, fjords etc.

2. The second thing I notice about Finland is that it seems cold. Could this be a secret to their success?

2a. Action Point: Turn Florida into an enclosed Arctic Tundra, give each family a herd of reindeer, and wait for the murder rate to drop.

 3. Last but not least, we have got to get some of that Finnish happiness, prosperity, health and overall quality of life here in the States. But how?

3a. Action Point: This may be a bit tricky diplomatically, but I say we go to Finland and offer every teacher there 3x their yearly salary to come back and teach in the U.S. In addition to setting up Finnish schools in every  major county, we also should set up Finnish Life Institutes, where our young people can learn how to be successful in today’s world from folks who know how to get it done.

The way I look at it, this isn’t admitting defeat or weakness; it’s reloading. Lebron was humble enough to admit he couldn’t do it alone, and look at him now! We need to do the same as a country. America is still great, but this Finnish infusion could really help us get back on track.